Linkedin Content Marketing: How to plan a year’s worth of content in an hour.

LinkedIn content marketing seems like teamwork for a stranger.

You should post 4-5 days to get results. To post 4-5 days you should have lots of ideas. To write those ideas you should have strong writing skills. And it goes on.

It seems a lot of work, but you can do it yourself. And we’ll show you how by sharing our content marketing strategy.

Here are the three things you’ll learn:

• How to create a content marketing plan for a year in an hour.
• The 4 best performing content ideas for your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
• LinkedIn engagement pods: the secret weapon of virality.

Onwards to the first chapter

How to create a content marketing plan for a year in an hour.

There are two types of LinkedIn profiles.

Publisher and library.

A Publisher profile is a profile that posts about any topic on LinkedIn.

They use LinkedIn to post about their niche. Or they post about broader topics about business. Sometimes funny videos, quotes, and even memes.

If you could scroll down in their profile, you’ll not see consistency among their posts, nor a connection. They publish whatever they like and bring them likes.

On the other side, we have the library profile

A Library profile is a profile that posts content in a specific range.

They post about their niche and giveaway learnings about their field. Every content they post is united and comes from one big topic.

If you scroll down in this profile, you’ll get the impression that you can find anything about the “X” topic.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to be a library profile. In other words, a thought leader.

• First, you’ll learn how to create a library content model
• Second, you’ll learn how to get inspired by using social media platforms like Reddit, Quora and Facebook
• And finally, you’ll learn how to create a consistent LinkedIn content strategy

How to create a library profile?

You are here, so you probably know your target audience. And you might already have an idea about what they like.

What they like to read, consume, see, hear, and so on. All of this information will help you to create a topic cluster for your content marketing strategy.

What is a topic cluster, you say?

It originated from the content and SEO (search engine optimization) universe, but it’s also handy on LinkedIn.

It means a group of smaller topics that are built around one broader topic. It’s always better to read and see at the same time. So check this:

It’s essential to plan this before you start. Because once you do it, you’ll have a roadmap forever and never ask, “Okay, what should I post next?”. So it’s crucial for your LinkedIn marketing strategies.

For the sake of this example, our subject is LinkedIn Marketing.

Let’s see which sub-topics we can cover.

• LinkedIn profile optimization
• Linkedin content creation
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn ads
• LinkedIn growth marketing tools
• LinkedIn trends in 2020
• LinkedIn updates

And so on. But it doesn’t stop here because every sub-topic has its own sub-topics. Such as:

Linkedin Sales Navigator

• How to use Boolean search
• How to use the feed of sales navigator
• How to use filters
• and on and on.

You see, you’ll have dozens of topics to cover. You can also use the same approach for your blog posts; it’ll boost your SEO.

At the end of the session, you’ll have something like this. I used MindMaster to do this. It’s an online mind mapping tool to create such maps.

You can use whatever suits you best. But you should aim for the most popular topics to make sure that it’s worth it. Which leads us to the next thing.

How to use Reddit, Quora, Facebook communities to generate content ideas.

People are already asking and talking about your topics on the internet. You only have one thing to do — hunt for those questions to optimize your content marketing.

This part will also help you to get your daily or weekly inspiration. If you can use one of the platforms above correctly, you’ll have infinite content marketing ideas.

Every platform has different dynamics. Here you’ll learn how to navigate and find your trophies.

We’ll not use Google, because you probably already know how to use it. Just type your keywords and Google will complete your query with popular searches. That’s all you need to know.

Note: You can use the same content marketing strategy to feed your blog. But we’ll not approach it from an SEO perspective.

How to use Reddit to get inspiration

You can find almost everything on Reddit. In that case, we want to find a marketing subreddit. 

Subreddit is a community within Reddit on a particular topic where you can post links or create a self-post and then discuss it with likeminded people. 

This is the home page. All you have to do is to type “marketing” in the search.

Here you’ll see some subreddits about marketing. You can click view more to see more subreddits and join them. (We recommend you to do that, more subreddits = more ideas.)

Here is a marketing subreddit with thousands of people. Let’s join and take a look. 

If you want to see the most popular topics, you can filter it. In this case, we wanted to see the most popular posts from this week.

As you see, it got hundreds of upvotes. That means it’s popular and people like to engage with such topics. You see, you already have one topic to cover.

Let’s take it further and perform a search within the subreddit. Remember, our topic was marketing for LinkedIn. Let’s see what will happen when we type LinkedIn.

Lots of ideas and comments. Go into those posts to see what people are discussing about content marketing on LinkedIn. Sometimes the comment section can be a goldmine for your content plan. 

That’s it for Reddit. You now have the essentials, and you can dig deeper to find your inspiration from different subreddits and searches.

How to use Quora to get inspiration

Quora is a question platform. People ask questions about any topic and can find answers from experts or regular people.

Similar to Subreddits, Quora has “Spaces” for their communities. You can apply the same search techniques here. Let’s search for marketing again.

You can’t filter the questions in Quora. But you can see how many people follow a specific question. This is a good indicator of a popular topic. 

At the end of the By Type section, you can click “Spaces” to find communities related to marketing. 

You can follow the spaces and receive notifications from them. Spaces will send you notifications about the popular questions and answers. 

But how can you measure if the question is popular?

Followers and answers are some key metrics. But you can click the three dots and then click “View Stats and Log” to see how many views that topic has.

Like this:

As you see, the amount of views on this question is amazing. That means people are looking for this topic. You can dig deeper into comments to look for inspiration and find a goldmine for your content marketing.

Little known Quora trick to find the best weekly impressions

Here you’ll learn our secret strategy to find the most popular topics in seconds.

First, you need to navigate to the Ads Manager from your profile.

Then click to create a campaign.

Here you’ll fill in the required spaces to proceed. You can put thousands of dollars into your campaign because you’re not going to publish anything in the end.

Press continue to proceed to the next screen. 

Here choose the questions and click the bulk add button at the upper right corner.

On the next screen, you’ll see this box. Here you can write more than one keyword, but in this case, “LinkedIn” is what we’re looking for. Press continue.

And bingo. You have the most popular topics with the highest volume (weekly). You can easily create tens of content pieces for LinkedIn out of those results.

Note: Don’t forget to check the answers; you can find ideas and even lead generation tactics from the answer section.

How to use Facebook to get inspiration

The content marketing strategy is the same for Facebook. Probably you know everything about this social media platform, it’s old enough. 

So I’ll not waste your time with the simple stuff. 

Here what you should do is look for groups with the desired keyword. Then join the group and monitor the best posts weekly. 

That’s it for this part. 

These platforms are out of LinkedIn, but it’s essential to engage with your audience. If you have the time and energy, try to be active in the communities you find. It’ll help you to create a thought leader profile.

BONUS: Type your keywords into https://answerthepublic.com/ and watch what happens.

The only content marketing model you need to generate quality leads.

You have dozens of content pieces that are invisible to you. But after you understand this strategy, you’ll start to figure out how to see them.

For most business people, I know content is a painful topic, but really, it isn’t. 

Here is the only thing you need to understand the potential of content.

No content is limited to single-use.

You have a comprehensive blog post or long format content.

You can squeeze it and extract tons of content out of it. How?

• Make a carousel (slider) content that sums up your blog post
• Divide it into five parts and write a long-form post on LinkedIn 
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Shoot the video of the blog post
• Write a bit more about it and transform it into a lead magnet
• Create an infographic out of it. It doesn’t have to be limited to pie charts. You can sum up key takeaways, as we do in this eBook

You have raw footage of video from an interview or seminar or workshop.

• Extract fun, informative and interesting moments then create 1-3 minute LinkedIn posts
• Repurpose them into 15-30-45-60 sec videos
• Write a long-form LinkedIn content about your experience
• Create slides out of it
• Write five key takeaways posts
• Make gifs out of the raw footage
• Go even smaller and capture some photographs from the footage and write about it
• And many many more

You see what I am doing here? I tear down huge content pieces until I have nothing in my hands.

Here we made a map for you, this content plan has four phases. (We got the inspiration from Gary Vee and interpreted it to our needs.)

You can apply this to all of your social media channels. And you can get 30 out of 1 piece of content.

But one thing here is crucial. If you are invited somewhere as a speaker, record it. Workshop? Record it. An interview or show? Don’t miss it.

You get the idea. You should document your business moments or daily moments that are related to business.

On the other hand, you should produce long written content. If you have a team that’s a good start. If you don’t have a team, you can find a freelance copywriter in your industry to do your content.

This is the ideal plan. Start with one and in this way the rest will follow.

The content for you will not be a problem as long as you can get 30 out of 1 piece of content.

The 5 Best performing content ideas for your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

This part is designed to inspire you. We have tried and observed many content approaches and these 5 best practices that will bring the best results by far.

Note: It’s hard to get conversions and results without an optimized LinkedIn profile. You can check this guide to learn how to transform your profile into a conversion channel.

Educational content to nurture your prospects.

Educational content is the core of every lead generation strategy. Because your prospects always have a problem and therefore have a lot of questions.

If you can solve their question with your fulfilling content, they will eventually trust you, like you, respect you, and after a while, they will feel like they owe you.

This is pretty similar to the psychology of gift-giving.

This trade of information will make your bond stronger, and the receiver is more likely to give something back.

So when they decide to buy a product to solve their problems, they’ll knock on your door.

But the content you provide is also important. If your content on LinkedIn is an old fashioned approach to a topic that has already been solved, it won’t work.

Here are three dynamics of great content marketing.

Personality:

Gary Vee does the trash talk (a vlog where he flips the objects in garage sales) regardless, and he has millions of followers. He does he.

And you’ll do you. If you’re funny, show it. A football fan? Then give examples from the football world. Show your personality.

Get into details:

Give your audience a piece of actionable advice. Don’t just point out the problem, show the solution.

Be genuine:

90% of the content on the internet is the same. Don’t parrot what is out there but approach the subject from your perspective.

Types of educational contents you can write or record a video about:

• How-to videos: 

If your product or service is complicated to understand, you can explain how-to-use it by writing long text forms. Or shooting videos.

If you don’t have a product, show how you can solve their problems with your unique strategies on how to approach.

Keep your videos short and concise. Always start with your brand name and wrap up with a call to action.

• Provide new strategies and thoughts in your industry.

As a growth marketing agency, we always write about new trends, playbooks, and the latest tools in our LinkedIn.

That helps our prospects to believe in us and encourages us to follow us. How can you demonstrate your expertise?

Choose the topics you can highlight your personality and expertise with, then share your experiences with your network.

• Product video or text.

Product videos are great to demonstrate what your service is capable of. You can record one or multiple videos (or text) to show your features and solutions to your LinkedIn network.

Create carousel content to make it snackable

Carousel (slider content) is a super snackable way of content marketing. It deserves the attention because it’s engaging to both visual learners and readers.

Since it’s easy to consume and packed with valuable information, people share it more.

Here is one content marketing example from us:

Here, we’ve broken down our 20 growth marketing trends in 2020 blog post into several pieces. We’ve created three engaging carousel posts out of one piece of content.

Want some inspiration?

You can narrate almost anything.

• Five little known neuromarketing tricks that turn prospects into leads
• Six habits that you must develop as an entrepreneur
• Ten tips to boost your engagement on LinkedIn
• Or four ways to generate more leads with “X product”

You can use Canva.com to create your own designs. It’s pretty easy with templates. Or you can hire a freelancer for $10-20.

Note: You need to transform your images into PDF format to be able to post a carousel content.

Testimonial content to boost your credibility

Your best customers can sell better than your best salespeople. That’s a fact.

When happiness and satisfaction are genuine, it’s hard not to believe it. So if you have satisfied customers, record a testimonial or interview them.

They’ll always be happy to help you, so don’t hesitate to ask.

Imagine you had three testimonials, and from each, you have 30 minutes of raw footage.

In these exemplary testimonials, you’ve asked the following questions:

• What are the three benefits you’ve experienced as a result of buying/joining [our product/service]?

• Why would you recommend this to someone who might be on the fence?

• What has exceeded your expectations since working with us?
• What is the biggest learning or take away from the course?

And so on. From each question, you can create different content. Or even multiple contents.

This is how we do it.

From this 30-minute footage, you can cut tens of 30-90 second videos and create testimonial posts on LinkedIn.

Like this (you can click to the link to watch it):

For each post, we add one copy at the beginning of the video to show what the video is about, and a CTA in the end for conversions.

Lucky you if you have a video marketer. Or else you need to cut and paste by yourself.

The first seconds of the video above looks like this first:

Then we finish it with a CTA:

Elevate your personal influence.

You might have a fun personality and team but people can’t know the people behind your logo. And if they only know your logo, it’s not good, because they’ll probably perceive you as a lifeless organization without a face. 

A cold and distant picture.

Meanwhile, if your competitor is out there, showing her face and expertise on LinkedIn, she’ll have the upper hand.

Then your prospects will trust her instead of you. People are more likely to trust somebody they know personally rather than a logo.

That’s why the majority of successful online companies have a face. And people on LinkedIn seem to understand the importance of having a personal brand.

Just scroll down for a bit and you’ll see tons of posts like that. Because it’s working very well.

LinkedIn: Sue DeCaro

Sue’s outline is great for two reasons.

• It immediately tells us what the video is about and it can be a thumb stopper when you’re scrolling.
• Until the end of the video, she highlights her website

Since our visual memory holds the information for a much longer time, that means you’ll remember it for a while after staring at the same screen for minutes.

Video works best because it’s a medium where you can show your personal traits. And even the smallest gesture or moment could make people see through you and like you.

What type of content?

Anything that you can use to emphasize your expertise.

If you’re a Facebook Ad expert, talk about trends and best tips. Good at time-management? Then talk about how you manage your time.

Or if you are a master of habits, share how you develop good habits.

Or just about life and personal experiences about your kids. These are welcome too.

This is the game of value. The one that provides the most value gets the leads.

But the game is also to make people see your post. And for that, we have one hack in our armory; a hack that will change your engagement numbers forever.

Read on to find out.

LinkedIn Pods: the secret weapon of virality.

Let’s demystify that LinkedIn Pod first:

You can think of it as a private group of LinkedIn users. But they’re focused on one thing: engaging, liking, commenting on other people’s content.

So when you’re a member of LinkedIn pods, you’ll be able to share your post with others. Then you’ll have instant engagement from everyone else in the pod.

Why is it so effective?

It could be the secret marketing strategy to go viral on LinkedIn.

Remember, we talked about why the first 30-60 minutes of your post is essential in the third chapter.

If your post has lots of engagement in these first minutes, then LinkedIn will mark your post as “potentially good content” and then starts to show it on your connections feed.

That’s why you need that bulky and instant engagement from pods. And there are two different types of pods: manual and automatic.

Let’s first discover how you can benefit from manual pods.

Manual LinkedIn pods

You can find manual pods all over on the internet. There are groups on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, and probably in other forums, we don’t even know.

You can type on Google “Manual LinkedIn pods” and trace the one that fits your taste.

These pods usually exist on social media platforms like FB and LinkedIn. Here is a group that I’m a member of on LinkedIn called Game of Content.

Every day there is one giant thread for engagement. And people in the group comment there their post link and wait for engagement.

So you need to link it manually and like other peoples post in the same fashion.

Another way is to create your own engagement pod.

This is our GrowForce Engagement Pod. We have 52 super active alumni network of our growth marketing academy. (Sorry, it’s only for alumni 😉 )

You can invite your friends or colleagues in a WhatsApp or Slack group to create your pod. Or you can go further and announce that you want to create a LinkedIn pod in a specific subreddit.

But be careful with the notifications and chat options. For example, in our pod, chatting is not allowed to prevent the notification festival.

Our members just post the links, and that’s all.

Downsides of manual pods

It’s not super consistent. Sometimes you can get ten likes and some other times 60. But it works.

You should contribute to the pod manually. That means clicking every link and liking each of them. It takes seconds, but I’m lazy, you’re lazy.

Now let’s check what the other option is.

Automatic LinkedIn Pods

Automatic LinkedIn Pods solve all the problems above. It helps you to engage with a bigger audience and, yes, all automatic.

And it also helps you to find people that have relevant interests as you. You can filter pods by location and find the best pods for your industry.

Lempod is the most popular option with a broader audience. It’s an add on that you can download from Google Chrome Store.

You pay $5 for each engagement pod you want to join. And you can post only one post in 24 hours.

The only downside is sometimes you might find yourself liking and commenting on a post that you don’t like.

But it’s quite effective, though!

Bottom line

You have the shortcut now. All you need to do is a one or two-days groundwork to determine your strategy.

Then create your clusters. Always save the things you like when you’re looking for ideas on Reddit, Quora, Facebook or Google. Then reiterate those ideas a little bit and transform them into LinkedIn posts.

Once you get the rhythm, you’ll start to post autonomously. It’ll be a thing that you’ll have fun and get a profit.

Hope you enjoyed the read. The best thing you can do to help us grow is to share. Share this article with your friends and colleagues if you think it’s valuable.

Cheers,